Biography: While Pamela Petro brings an unbridled enthusiams to her work, her topics fail to enlighten the reader as to the central theme, which is the relationship of Kinglsey Porter and his wife Lucy, writes John McBratney.
The dust jacket describes The Slow Breath of Stone as "a Romanesque love story" and it contains two photographs of a middle-aged couple: he, a trim figure, wears a three-piece suit with a collar and tie; she wears a summer frock with her hair, severely parted, tied back in a bun. Inside the dust jacket there is the description: "an absorbing travel book, a meditation on geology, Romanesque art and the romance of physical decline . . ." All these topics are ventilated by Pamela Petro, with her unbridled enthusiasm, but most of them fail to enlighten the reader as to the central theme, which is the relationship of Kingsley Porter with his wife Lucy, the couple who feature on the dust jacket. At times, Petro allows herself to diverge far from the Porters, recounting in detail her conversations with two travelling companions.
With those reservations aside, there is no doubt that Petro, in 2000, at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, came across an excellent subject for inquiry: the Porters. They both came from rich East Coast backgrounds. Kingsley Porter was an academic "wunderkind" having published his first book on medieval architecture at the age of 25 in 1909. In 1912, he married Lucy, six years his senior. From March 1919 until the autumn of 1921, they travelled, with chauffeur and maid, along the great medieval pilgrimage ways that led to Santiago de Compostela to examine the sculpture of Romanesque churches. While so doing, Kingsley accepted an academic posting at Harvard. In 1923, Kingsley published Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads with 1,527 photographic illustrations, many by Lucy.
In 1928, in front of Coutances Cathedral, Kingsley told Lucy he was a homosexual. In 1930, he purchased Glenveagh Castle and its vast estate, in Co Donegal, as a bolt hole from Harvard. In 1931 he published The Crosses and Culture of Ireland. In 1932, he approached Havelock Ellis, who had written the voluminous work Studies in the Psychology of Sex, about his "case". At the same time, Ellis was in correspondence with a 20-year-old Californian, Alan Campbell (not Dorothy Parker's husband), about his homosexuality. Through Ellis's good offices, Kingsley invited Alan to join Lucy and himself at Glenveagh in the summer of 1932. Kingsley and Alan became sexual partners if not exactly lovers. Subsequently, Alan was ensconced by Kingsley, in early 1933, in the Porters' Cambridge house as their secretary. Inevitably tongues began to wag and some unspecified Harvard proceedings in relation to Kingsley appear to have been set in motion. The Porters retreated to Glenveagh. On July 7th they spent the night in the cottage which they had built on Inisbofin. On the following morning Kingsley went out for a walk. He never returned. The official line was that he fell from the cliffs. At the coroner's inquest Lucy said they had no financial or other worries.
Lucy's evidence to the coroner would appear to have been less than the whole truth. It is hard to describe the book as a love story - but it reveals a little known facet of Glenveagh's past.
John McBratney is the chairman of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Co Monaghan, and is a barrister.
The Slow Breath of Stone. By Pamela Petro, Fourth Estate, 287pp. £20